Howard defeated Tyner Saturday in a key District 6-AA boys’ basketball game, splitting the regular season two-game set and reinforcing the fact the two longtime rivals are the league’s teams to beat in the upcoming district tournament.
In any other year the crowd would have been standing-room-only at Henry Bowles Gymnasium, with fans cheering every big moment and with athletes feeding off the energy in a building that would have seemed to have its own pulse for two hours.
Instead, in the Season of COVID, every bounce of the ball, every squeak of a sneaker and every shadow in the mostly empty stands stood out. Since the winter sports season began in late November, the TSSAA has followed Gov. Bill Lee’s mandate limiting crowd sizes to no more than 150. But while the basketball and wrestling athletes have become accustomed to playing in front of only a few family members, for those in charge these are difficult financial times.
Saturday’s rivalry matchup is the type of game seasons and careers are built on. It’s also the type of event inner city athletic budgets survive on. As 2020 turned into 2021 some of those programs are in financial distress.
“It’s great we’re still getting a chance to play,” Howard coach James Talley said, “but this has hurt us a lot this year. I don’t know the exact numbers, but a typical Howard-Tyner or Howard-Brainerd game, from the gate alone, would bring in eight to 10 thousand dollars.